Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday May 15, 2010 @05:11AM
from the ok-are-you-following-this dept.

analysethis writes "In the UK last month the author/compiler of the well-known-in-Internet-circles 'terrorist handbook' pleaded guilty to seven counts of collecting information that could have been used to prepare or commit acts of terrorism, with a maximum jail term of 10 years. Today the first people caught with downloaded copies have been put behind bars — a white-supremacist father and son pairing getting 10 and two years respectively, convicted of three counts of possessing material useful for acts of terror. How many will be emptying their recycle bins after this conviction? As of writing, the book is still freely available on Amazon.com to buy." Note: it seems that there's some overlapping nomenclature at play. Terrance Brown, the man who pleaded guilty to terror charges last month, is said to have been distributing a CD set including among other things extracts from Al-Qaeda manuals. His "cookbook" differs then from William Powell's 1971 book by a similar title, though (confusingly enough) the linked Wikipedia article implies that the father-and-son pair arrested possessed a copy of the Powell book as well; its text may well have been among the materials that Brown distributed.

The article says that the son was convicted only of the thoughtcrime. I would've thought that if he was actually involved with making the poison, both could've been convicted for that.

Like most overreaching laws, the first few people convicted will obviously deserve it, and could've been convicted for a proper crime if people were prepared to do their jobs properly. Serious misuse will happen when we've all accepted the necessity of the new law.

Is there a list of what we can't read? Are there especially accurate works of fiction we can be arrested for reading? Perhaps the law will be used against people collecting information about unpleasant things our government does (remember, taking photos of police is already illegal, if the photos could be "useful for terrorism")?

For example, there are people that try to discover the routes taken by trucks transporting nuclear materials in the UK, in order to inform communities along the routes and peacefully protest. I guess they are terrorists now.

I would mod him up, but I don't want to be seen publicly supporting terrorists.

Too bad, you've confessed the intent to do so - enough to charge you with a conspiracy to support terrorists, mate. The party van is out. Bet if we check your browser cache, it'll turn out that you're a pedo, too.

If I were in the UK I'd start downloading and distributing the Anarchist Handbook via bittorrent just to challenge this ridiculous law.

Any good patriot should be willing to spend time in jail to protect the Nature-given right of free speech. It's your mouth. Nobody has a right to muzzle it (although they do have the right to remove you from their private property). The government was created by the People to protect individual rights, not to take them away. Any government which stops acting as a servan

And this, children, is why we don't share our reading lists and other personal information on sites like Facebook. It's also why we should be wary of other people keeping track of everything we read, whether it's over the web or on devices like Kindle.

What you're advocating is making most people criminals and then trusting the police to only arrest the ones who 'deserve it'.

Honestly, that method probably would result in more criminals being convicted, but it also vastly increases the power of the police to act without oversight. Anybody who pisses off an officer could quite easily and legitimately be convicted, despite having done nothing (really) wrong.

Criminalising everybody only works if you absolutely trust the state and your local police to enforce such things nicely. In reality, given sufficiently vague laws, some of them would be just as likely to arrest you because they were fed up of you complaining about the drunken Doberman owner and it presents an easier way to make you leave them alone.

We in the UK aren't facing an 'epidemic of knife crime', either. It was just the Daily Mail looking for something to get excited about and the Labour government looking for more reasons to justify whatever they wanted to do.

Though this isn't me arguing against gun ownership, it's just trying to strip away hysteria and media manipulation.

No. Possession and distribution of a terrorist manual is an actual crime, not a thought crime. He's convicted for actions that he did, not thoughts that he had.

Convicting someone for possessing any book or source of information is a thoughtcrime law. There are any number of reasons one could possess a "terrorist manual". One could simply be curious as to what a "terrorist manual" might look like. One might want to look at why the terrorists are doing what they are doing, and what their common tactics are. One might want to become a terrorist. One might be very interested in working in counterterrorism law enforcement, but not have the resources to go to school for it yet or still be in the "general education" parts. One might simply want to inform oneself about a major issue in the world today from a primary source. Only one of those is a problematic motive.

Now, of course, once you start actually making weapons, that's quite a different story. So, "thought crime" may not apply well in this specific case. But if you can be arrested just for possession of the book, without possession of anything it tells you how to make, then yes, that is an arrest for thought crime. We have the right to read and be informed, and to know things. Even "bad" things. We just don't have the right to do bad things that harm others.

Exactly: punishing someone for mere possession of information is the creation of thoughtcrime.

The trouble with thoughtcrime is that not only does it not consider intent, which is hard to determine in absolute terms in court anyway, it also does not consider action, which is the objective basis for most court cases. Where do you draw the line, if your society is not going to allow people to explore information?

I personally have no interest in making chemical weapons or nuclear bombs, but I can imagine that a research chemist might overlap the former and an engineer working on a nuclear power plant might overlap the latter. Maybe I'm irrational, but I like the idea that pharma companies can develop new drugs to improve our health, and power firms can provide enough electricity to keep the lights on.

I do have an interest in driving, and was taught many of the same techniques as police drivers by my ex-police driving instructor, to help me avoid accidents and stay safer on the roads. At what point does knowledge of these techniques become "acts preparatory to terrorism" or something like that, given that I am familiar with some of the defensive driving techniques that security officers would use to protect a VIP?

I also have a background in martial arts. I probably know a lot of things that would help me if I were ever to confront a police officer with their usual array of weapons and defensive equipment. I have no reason to do so and never have done so, but if we're allowing thoughtcrime then when does this knowledge change from an academic interest in historical arts or the results of training for perfectly legal contact sports into something sinister and worthy of suspicion or even prosecution?

I would guess that a high proportion of responsible, normally law-abiding adults in the UK could be fitted up with some sort of thoughtcrime without too much effort. As Cardinal Richlieu famously said, "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something in them with which to hang him."

Did you notice Blair's Serious Crime Bill, via which you could be punished eg forced to move hundreds of miles, by merely doing something which would inadvertently aid any potential serious crime, whether or not a crime was committed?
It was amended by Brown to make the punishment proportionate.

Now, of course, once you start actually making weapons, that's quite a different story.

Ah, how far we've already slipped.

From an American viewpoint (because TFA is in Britain, which is a little different), it's not a crime to make chemical weapons. It's not a crime to possess explosives, or any other thing that potentially can go boom. It's a crime to use them, or intend to use them in a manner that will harm others. If improperly kept, it can be a violation of certain safety codes, but not a crime.

But nowadays, people automatically associate having explosive or chemicals (regardless what the

So what you're saying is that when Winston Smith was convicted for keeping a journal, that was not a thought crime? After all, possession of a journal was an actual crime, not a thought crime. He was convicted for actions that he did, not thoughts that he had.

Speaking seriously, did you ever read 1984? Did the point of the book pass entirely over your head? Being convicted of a crime simply for owning a particular book with "illegal information" in it is practically the definition of thoughtcrime. It's so s

I'm not convinced that a book which describes how to make bombs is a terrorist manual, even if some of the speech in the book is inflammatory. There are plenty of legitimate uses for a bomb manual; it could be of great utility to civilian militias, an important part of our freedom and national heritage.

Winston did a lot of illegal things in the novel, yes, but he mentions on several occasions that simply the act of keeping a journal at all is a thoughtcrime.

Read the first link - the BBC story is about a guy who simply collected and sold information, while the Telegraph story is about those who were caught using it.

The charge that the former pleaded guilty to was "collecting information that could have been used to prepare or commit acts of terrorism". It's an insanely broad law which can and (if history is anything to go by) will be used to stifle legitimate collection of factual information, not to mention the chilling effect from simply having it on the books.

Any number of things, not least the majority of university level science and engineering textbooks, could be extremely useful to terrorists. The law is probably there to be selectively applied to those who they can't get anything else on. Sure, it probably will rightly convict a few potentially dangerous people, but in doing so we are suffering a huge abridgement of our rights.

'I have the feeling the conviction has more to do with a bunch of white supremacists holding large quantities of ricin, than that actual act of learning how to make it.'

However, in the other case mentioned in TFA (the most worrying from a civil liberties point of view), Terrance Brown was apparently just compiling stuff available elsewhere (mostly or entirely online) and selling it on a CD:

These are non-copyrighted, public domain texts prepared by the USA armed forces. They all teach how to create terror in the enemy ranks. The last one, "Improvised Munitions", teaches how to make explosives from stuff you find anywhere.

No need to go through lengthy procedures to buy "dangerous" chemicals, they are everywhere if you know where to look. And this free manual, courtesy of the US Army, teaches you where to look.

I think you miss the GP's point. The GP's point is there's a difference between possessing a manual/guide and actually creating the banned substances itself (at least banned in the form and quantities found).I don't see a problem with people having manuals for making such weapons (unless they obtained them illegally, or those manuals are banned by the laws of their country for some reason). It's when they start making them then it becomes a problem.

This is one of the reasons I am so happy we have changed government and the new guys are planning a "mass repeal" bill to restore civil liberties.

Of course I do not support terrorism and I want to see those who would murder others stopped. But the fear-driven Labour government went way beyond that, moving us into a world where censorship and thoughtcrime seem to be significant parts of our legal system. There comes a point where I would rather take my chances with the bad guys than see our basic freedoms and way of life eroded any further.

This is one of the reasons I am so happy we have changed government and the new guys are planning a "mass repeal" bill to restore civil liberties.

I wouldn't hold out too much hope. The previous Conservative government took away plenty of civil liberties. For example a policemen could stop someone who he believed was travelling to a rave, and send them away from the area. Then there was the so called "sus" law, where a policeman could stop and search anyone.

I'm not filled with happy thoughts that everything will all get put right just like that. I suspect it would take a written constitution and a lot of case law in a constitutional court to really fix the damage done by successive governments operating under a climate of fear that they themselves have helped to perpetuate. But I would be happy to see things at least start moving in the right direction again, and I am optimistic that with the increased influence of the Lib Dems we will see more real improvement than we otherwise might have.

If I posses a manual written by Stallman which explains how to use GCC and also advocates writing open source software it does not show I have an intent to create open source software.Not even a little.Not the slightest bit.It might convince a brain dead judge that I was intending to code open source software but all I'd be interested in is using the book as a manual, not a guide to life.

Child porn is not illegal because the person in question might want to touch chilren.(though that's what the sun readers might like.)Child porn is illegal because it's production required that a child be taken advantage of, abused or hurt.

the creation of the anarchist cookbook did not require anyone to be hurt or killed so it is nothing. absolutely nothing like child porn.

It's a false, dishonest and misleading comparison.

I have a pile of chemistry books which would give you all the information you'd need to

Even CGI generated child pornography is illegal. No actual child involved in any way.

Which again is utterly insane and based on nothing more than the opinions of moralizing bigots.Nobody should be able to turn themselves into criminal while sitting alone in a sealed room with nothing more than a biro and a sheet of paper.

why punish people for harm they do when you can punish them in advance for crimes you think they might one day do!bonus points if you can lock up people for being creepy as well since nobody likes creepy people.

Its still bullshit. The "terrorism manual" might just accidentally have been the only place he could find that would describe what he needed. Or he had the manual from before because he was curious, and later when he wanted to produce the actual substance (just for fun) and he looked it up in the manual, since he had it handy already.

There are so many reasons that he could be in possession of both that do not establish intent at all, it's just pointless.

That you can come up with ludicrously twisted scenarios doesn't mean anything. An individual case is judged on the evidence available for that case. If there's sufficient evidence for a reasonable man to be convinced that a crime has occurred, as described in the relevant act, then he will be convicted. If there isn't enough evidence, then he won't be.

And remember that that reasonable man is judging based on everything that is heard in court, not the few paragraphs of a report on a newspaper's website.

Surely for something like this, it's not even the case that you'd need instructions. A quick hit on Wikipedia tells me that Ricin occurs in Castor beans and the pulp of about eight beans contains enough to kill an adult human. Well I thought ricin came from rice (don't know why), but once you've crossed that bit of ignorance, it surely can't be that hard to derive ricin, can it? Buy castor beans, pulp them up and try a few experiments at getting a solution out of them. You can test it on mice bought from any old pet store. (I wouldn't, I'm vegetarian, but I'm presuming some terrorists have fewer reservations about animal testing). That's assuming that the information isn't already out there. I quick search finds that the process for extracting ricin is actually FILED AT THE US PTO [google.com]. It's a matter of public record! Hillarious!:D

I think every other student has a copy of the Anarchist cookbook. Big deal. Terrorist used to mean someone that scared people to get their ends from the government. These days "terrorist" means someone used by the government to scare you with.

That was my thought as well. There's a difference between a guide on making a few kinds of small scale explosives and even manuals on geurilla tactics and a manual for making illegal weapons of indiscriminate destruction.

I have a lot of Astronomy books. They describe what is needed to create supernovae and active galactic nuclei. Do you have any idea how small these terrorist books look in comparison? Should I be locked up for that? (The one weakness to my argument of course is that we don't actually have the tech to assemble supernovae let alone galaxies, but hey).

Not really. It's just information. A manual describing how so-called WMDs work can contain the same information and be titled "WMD Processes, a Handbook for Investigators" or similar. An ordinary military close combat manual or unconventional operations manual or "Field Expedient weapons" manual can have the same info as a pub named "Eco-Necro-Pedo-Copro-Jihadist Tutorial for Total Annihilation!".

Well, does it still matter? You're already suspicious if you happen to want to know. While the US may still have its 1st amendment, other countries that don't have such stopgags to the suppression of information are already way ahead.

Yeah I learned those things in case the apocalypse aliens or whatever my most paranoid fantasies can conjure. Comes and I have to defend myself. Knowledge is power. I guess Knowledge is now also terrorism.

Knowledge in the hands of those that are being ruled has always been a threat to those that are in power. Knowledge has always been the primary tool of revolutions, not a single revolution in the history of mankind has been led by uneducated people. And the primary tool of oppression has been withdrawal of information and knowledge. With a growing resentment against the ruling group, their paranoia grows, to the point that they see anyone with knowledge and information as a threat to their power.

convicted of three counts of possessing material useful for acts of terror

Can sombody explain why this is illegal? Every highschool student taking a chemistry course 'possesses material useful for acts of terror'. The fact that somebody owns something that COULD be used for some illegal activity doesn't make that person a criminal. Else, everybody would be in prison. Have you ever used a knife? A car? A computer? Thought so.

Comparing private ownership of dangerous material to access in a public institution (presumably for learning) is a bit of stretch. Educational institutions frequently have different controls. A less dangerous example: You can not let anyone copy a copyrighted book that you own, whereas libraries are allowed to do that.

Also, a knife, a car, a computer each have many legitimate uses.

I am not saying that I agree with the conviction (I don't know the details), but saying that the law being applied to ownership

Explain the practical uses of Ricin for the lay person. He created enough ricin to kill 9 people (500mg is lethal dosage according to Wiki). There's some hope it can be used for Cancer, but right now it just seem like it's really good at killing people.

Read the BBC link, it relates to a different case. The guy had collected together a bunch of information and was running a business selling CDs of it. Factual information, nothing more. He was charged with "collecting information that could have been used to prepare or commit acts of terrorism", "recklessly disseminating the information" and "transferring criminal property".

This is all despite the fact that "the court was told that Brown made tens of thousands of pounds from the business but had no terrorist sympathies". I see nothing in the article to suggest that the court believed his intent was anything other than that of making money.

You think that's bad? Imagine what happens when the powers that be find out, that about 49% of the population have the tools needed to rape women?

Only 49%? I would think that close to 100% of the population has the tools needed to rape women. Most people have hands, fingers, feet, tongues, etc. Of those who don't, they would have access to objects that could be used for the purpose. You'd practically have to be in a coma to not have tools of rape.

Read the BBC link, it relates to a different case. The guy had collected together a bunch of information and was running a business selling CDs of it. Factual information, nothing more. He was charged with "collecting information that could have been used to prepare or commit acts of terrorism", "recklessly disseminating the information" and "transferring criminal property".

This is all despite the fact that "the court was told that Brown made tens of thousands of pounds from the business but had no terroris

Wait, what? High school chemistry students sit down with pencil and paper and do chemical equations and draw what 2-phenyl-3,7-dichloro-whatever-cyclononane looks like. They don't actually mix things together - that would be too dangerous!

And the books are too busy being pedantic about the definition of acids and bases to say anything useful about how to make stuff go boom.

It seems to be almost impossible to take a pure chem. course these days. What chemistry there is, is taught in such a watered down manner that it's almost an abstract philosophy class - mixed in with "vinegar and baking powder" level experiments, all done behind a safety screen with full protective gear. I doubt there are many children today who could even tell you what H2SO4 smells like.

Comparing the Chemistry O-level I took a few decades ago with the BBC's example Chemistry GCSE (on their website) almost makes you want to cry. These days it contains questions like "what is the most environmentally appropriate use for a limestone quarry, that's been mined out?"

convicted of three counts of possessing material useful for acts of terror

Can sombody explain why this is illegal? Every highschool student taking a chemistry course 'possesses material useful for acts of terror'. The fact that somebody owns something that COULD be used for some illegal activity doesn't make that person a criminal. Else, everybody would be in prison. Have you ever used a knife? A car? A computer? Thought so.

The conviction in this case was almost certainly (although I can't find confirmation) under section 57 or 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000. These provide, respectively, that a person is guilty of an offence if he:

- "possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism."- "collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or [...] possesses a document or record containing information of that kind."

A legitimate reason to own the information is a defence to both of these charges - so if you're studying chemistry, for example, and your research involves making explosives you aren't guilty under this act. To make it clear what we're talking about, this is the same formulation as is used for knife crime in the UK - you can carry any knife you want as long as you actually need it, but you can't just carry a knife around because you want to. The fact that most people aren't even aware that there is a legal question operating when they carry their gardening tools illustrates the fact that the distinction works quite well.

Since British law is defined largely by judicial precedent it is important to bear in mind that this act was based on the provisions of the Criminal Justice act 1994; the effect of this is to mean that the decision in Rowe (2007) is likely to be binding, i.e. that if the defendant introduces evidence of a non-terrorist motive it is up to the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this defence is not valid.

Note also KvR (2008) where it was held that only a document:- Providing practical assistance in the commission of terrorist offences, and- That was intended to be used to assist in the preparation or perpetration of an act of terrorismwill lead to a conviction.

The effect of these precedents is that this law allows the conviction of people who deliberately gather information to aid in the commission of terrorist attacks - it does not make mere possession of the information a crime, since intent is also important. It seems to me entirely reasonable that people who abet terrorists should be guilty of an offence.

The article seems to suggest that the court accepted that Brown "had no terrorist sympathies". His reason for possessing the information was to sell it for profit. Is there any reason that this would not be a legitimate defence?

Not the Anarchist's Cookbook. Rife with inaccuracies and dangerous, or so my chemist friends tell me.

It has been years since I read it, I downloaded it with a 14.4 Modem the last time I saw it. At the same time I was taking Chemistry in College. We had one whole class devoted to Nitroglycerin, and the 3 of 4 unstable variants. I knew from class exactly how to synthesize nitroglycerin. And, after that class was over, I realized I have absolutely no desire to *EVER* try to make it. I remember my chem prof saying (as someone who was against hyperbole) "this stuff will blow up if you look at it funny", and "what are you going to do with it if you make some? Pour it down the sink?"

I then read the Anarchist's cookbook, and I remember the instructions of keeping the chemicals in an ice bath, and constantly stirring them... by hand...

As I said, it was a long time ago, but reading the directions for hand-stirring nitroglycerin, and trying to keep the temperature low with a thermometer i remember thinking that the book was designed to blow someone up who tried to follow the directions.

I got my copy of The Anarchists Cookbook back around 1994. It was distributed online via the web then, but previously via GopherNet and anonymous FTP. My copy arrived via sneakernet - downloading almost 1MB of ASCII on my 2.4kbaud modem would have taken a lot longer than being given a floppy disk.

Summary:" first people caught with downloaded copies have been put behind bars" TFA: "White supremacist who manufactured ricin jailed" Big difference. Now, we can focus on the charges against the author/writer, but make it a bit more clear please. Its retarded to arrest someone over information, but its the UK, so what can you expect. Who draws the line, do they arrest authors of high level physicist books about nuclear devices? UK is quickly revealing the police state mentality they have been hiding for so

There's a good reason why the original "Cookbook" is still in circulation: It's no threat. Well, at least to nobody but the poor idiot actually using it as a cookbook. It's a compilation of inaccurate and outdated information. If anything, putting this into the hands of wannabe terrorists is a good way to ensure that nothing bad happens.

I think the key point is that the prosecution had to show that the information these people had obtained was actually being used for terrorist acts. With the presence of the ricin, the possession of the instructions to make it became a crime because they clearly weren't being obtained for curiosity/education.

As I've explained above [slashdot.org], this law does not criminalise the possession of information. It is only an offence to gather information that would help in the commission of an act of terrorism with the intention that it be used to assist the commission of this act. I think we can all agree that people who are part of a plot to perpetrate acts of terrorism should be jailed.

Interesting that the authorities don't ban various religious texts and holy bibles that are used to promote terrorism and hatred.

In reality books don't kill people, and guns don't (even) kill people. Religious and authoritarian ideologies are used to kill people. But I don't expect the Authorities to ban authoritarian and bigoted hate-filled religious texts which help encourage violence. It's another great hypocrisy.

(And I'll emphasize that I don't WANT religious texts banned, I'm just emphasizing and point

FWIW, I knew a guy at school who was investigated by British police about 14 years ago for downloading manuals like this and being involved with a group of people involved in distributing such material and building shit for kicks... a Bachelors and a Masters later, he is now working at the Ministry of Defence (the UK DoD) as a strategist.

This doesn't surprise me at all. He was a fairly bright chap - though nothing spectacular - but his heart remained that of a pathological kid who liked pain and blowing shit up. The military want a monopoly on that sort of person; they'll either catch you when they can mould you, or get rid of you.

Not only that, but by allowing them to express their views openly we can confront them with the facts instead of letting them fester underground. I ran into some of those type preaching their hate in Dallas and told those standing there listening to their hate about my grandfather's experience in WWII, how he was there when they liberated one of the camps, how they had the bodies of prisoners stacked up like cordwood, how you couldn't tell male from female because they were all so starved, how they were warned before hand not to give them any food because the rich diet of K Rations that the soldiers had would cause them to have a systemic collapse, a real fucking horror story.

I would MUCH rather have those types of speech out in the open, where they can be confronted, than to allow them to fester underground unopposed, and my grandfather believed that as well. When I asked him if watching the protests against the soldiers in Viet Nam bothered him he said "We fought the Nazis so we would be free to speak, so even if I don't support their words, I support their right to say them". i know this crap like "free speech zones" would have grandfather spinning in his grave fast enough to power the southern US.

So while I say bust their ass if they are making bombs I do NOT support anyone getting busted for simply reading or possessing a book. Too close to thoughtcrime for my tastes. And never forget there are plenty on the far sides of the political spectrum that would just looove to throw anyone in jail who reads Marx or Mao or anything that is other than "Capitalism Fuck Yeah!"

Not only that, but by allowing them to express their views openly we can confront them with the facts instead of letting them fester underground.

In theory yes, but as we see on slashdot, ignorant people with incorrect facts are often celebrated by the community with up-modding, while those who try to counter with facts and logic are down-modded.

It works similarly outside of slashdot, in politics and society in general, the person with the loudest voice is often the victor, despite the faults in their argument.

Just like unpopular speech is still free, Slashdot posts aren't modded up for correctness or popularity. They're modded up for being interesting and well-communicated. Just because someone's wrong doesn't mean they should be modded down. I want to see the comments with which I disagree, so I can argue with them. Which is what happened here. I was actually meta-moderating, and your comment came up. I just had to jump in.

So you openly propose oppression and suppression of free speech is a good thing. Free speech is good 'in theory' but not in practice.

No. Where did I ever say that? My point was simply that it doesn't always work that way. I never said I opposed freedom of speech, just that it doesn't always work for the best. But it's still better than not allowing freedom of speech.

Maybe it is because in Europe we think of the holocaust, the killing of millions of people to take their property as a bad thing. Americans think of it has "how the west was won". Really, the only difference between Hitler and the US was that Hitler went east for Lebensraum.

Oh and free speech in the United States? Check the McCarthy trials. Yeah, cheer up US, you can say that all other races should be killed, but not that wealth should be distributed evenly.

Sorry, I can't find any information on the "McCarthy trials", care to tell me what you are talking about?
Were you perhaps referring to the McCarthy Hearings? Which ended up having far more negative consequences for Joseph McCarthy than for those on the receiving side.

Here in the UK we have an openly white-supremacist political party that fielded candidates in the recent General Election: the British National Party. They are trying so hard to appear "honest" and "reasonable" but they're really just a front for racial and religions bigotry and neo-Nazism.

Well I'm glad to know that it's not normal every day people. When I was 17 and read Fight Club for the first time I got terribly interested in this kind of crap, (amateur explosives and general mischief, not white supremacy!) and probably downloaded a lot of stupid things out of curiosity, it was a phase I grew out of, and I never intended to do anything for a second.. I do remember finding an awesome shaving creme "bomb" though.. . it would have made some mess! My mom would have been so surprised! And I wa

The brotherhood of mankind has ancient roots. In the remote shadows of human pre-history, there was only a single primitive culture. "Genetic tracking" is a new science but it indicates that "modern" man existed as a hunter-gatherer in eastern Africa around 150,000 years ago, with evidence of these same people discovered in the Middle East dated from around 80,000 years ago. A well-researched hypothesis that all humans are descended from a "mitochondrial" Eve (a reference to the mitochondrial DNA traced to a female ancestor living in east Africa 150,000 years, or about 7,000 generations, ago) emphasizes the "commonality" of all humans and our descent from a single "race." At one point, there were probably only around 10,000 humans in the world, and they gradually migrated, leaving a DNA trail behind them.

In other words we are all a mixture sharing common genes there is no master race so no matter how white you think you are you still have genes of black people in your DNA. Wack jobs white black muslim or christian need a little education but if that fails prison is probably the best place for them.

It isn't the literature that is a problem it is what people do with that information. I don't nee

If they are white supremacists who frequently use eliminationist rhetoric, their conviction on possessing weapons capable of killing a large number of people in Harlem or Brixton could turn their rhetoric from protected speech into credible threats.

People do remember the Nazi's. It is all very well to talk about free speech, until you see what free speech can lead to.

Americans LOVE to talk about free speech, but oddly enough none of them seem to remember the McCarthy trials or indeed the dixy chicks. Free speech? No, just a different set of rules of what you can't say.

It has been proven recently in South Africa and Rwanda that free speech can all to easily lead to horrific things. SA has had race riots... well riots... the race is all black, incited

The only thing that concerned me about all of this stuff is the Ricin that was allegedly produced - charge people with that, but but having information that is freely available everywhere? That's thoughtcrime and it's bullshit

Bullshit, much like the summary. It is not illegal to have a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook in the UK, despite what timothy would like you to believe. Not now, not in the past, and (probably) not ever. What *is* illegal is distributing copies, telling people to make things from t